Give a F...

Life is too short not to...

2024 summer is over for me today. Last week we dropped our daughter off at school and today my son starts his second year of high school. I hate the first day of school, probably as much as my 15 year old, maybe more. While I overhear parents saying how excited they are to have their time back, I’m thinking the total opposite. I want the time with my kids back. And this year hits a little extra hard, as it’s the first year I’m not driving one of my kids back and forth to school. Again, perhaps I’m anomalous in this regard, but I loved driving my kids to and from school. I wouldn’t trade that time for anything.

But here we are. Here I am. There they are.

But here is what I do when this season hits. I start a writing project. As I noted in a Note here on Substack yesterday, I tend to bite off more than I probably should, but I find great pleasure in trying to do too much. Life already feels like it’s going to be too short to get through everything I’d like. I’ve felt this way since I was young. So big is the world, how to possibly explore it, let alone finish and accomplish everything I’d like.

As I was walking with my darling and our dog yesterday we were discussing exploration. We were talking about travel in the Pre-Cell Era. It was incredibly different. Domestically and foreign, it involved paper maps. It involved credit cards or a lot of quarters anytime you wanted to make a long distance phone call from the road in the US, and calling from abroad was all but implausible. It could be done, but it didn’t really happen. There was no email. You got on a plane, and said, “see you when I get back,” to whomever you were leaving. You entered a void. And in that void was a very certain magic. If you were going for long enough you might send a letter from a post office abroad and it might make it home before you did. Or it might not. If you were gone long enough, someone might send you a post card to a predetermined post office aboard. This was wildly exciting when it worked. It often did not work though. And you found out months later from your friend that they sent it, it just didn’t arrive.

Once landed, you had to find your way into town. I’m referring to foreign travel here. You found either a taxi or a bus to get you into town. If you were on your game you perhaps had a Lonely Planet guide that might tell you which bus stop to get off at, and offer a few ideas of places to stay. I was never good about this, and either asked another traveler or, just winged it. You walked with your pack until you found a place you could afford, and so the journey started. Again, no cell phone for looking things up. No internet to look things up. No texting with friends back home. No backup. No support. You were out in the world. Fucking wild to think about now.

(Somewhere I’ve got a well documented journal on our multi-month trip to Morocco that offers this story in spades… I’ll try to dig it out and make some posts with it down the road.)

Domestically things were certainly a little easier as the language side of things makes it so. But paper maps and phone booths were the game. I still buy maps of areas I go because when the world ends… I’ll still find my way? I don’t have a good reason, but it’s like print books, I simply enjoy the art of maps and things on paper in general. Google and Apple make very practical displays for navigation, but there is nothing fun about looking at it. (Well, not true of Google Earth… It’s wildly interesting.)

But to that point, our discussion turned to the idea of exploring, and lack there of, and curiosity, and lack there of that we see in todays world. Exploring isn’t just seeing thing X. It’s about immersion in a new place. Experiencing the cultural and landscape differences. In modern society, with access to pictures and videos, and “content” from around the globe, and an incessant and continual “connection” to others, regardless of where in the world you are, people seem to be, for worse, losing interest in exploring. Exploring now entails finding the most dramatic “scene,” going to it, taking picture as if to prove you were there, and then leaving. Big Water Falls. See, I was there! Big Dramatic Mountain. See, I was there. Big Open Prairie… See… You get the point.

And we’ve become so numb to it, it’s beginning to feel now like people would rather just stay at home and not even bother. Why go there? I can just look at a picture. Scroll all day. Easy dopamine. More safety. Less wondering. Less hassle.

And here is the meat of the issue. Pictures aren’t the thing. Writing isn’t the thing. Reels aren’t the thing. Videos aren’t the thing. There is no substitute for experience. There is no substitute for the full immersion in a place with sights, smells, interactions, and all the emotions connected to wandering around in new territory. And here is where I’m hit in the stomach about what I see in modern society. Everyone seems to think their phones are offering experience and/or are the only gateway to experience. If you didn’t record it, was it worth it? (I write this with full admission that I’m a serial photographer and writer/documenter of what I do.)

People seem to be losing curiosity about the world, assuming that their phones offer the gist of all knowledge and experience, and it’s playing out in a way that seems to be lessening the human experience to a terrible degree. Simple pleasures of sitting in the park, jumping in the cold lake, making out with your loved one, watching the night sky, touching and feeling others, the world, the forest needles, getting stung by a bee, getting blisters after a long day walking, getting heart broken, lost, found, going into experiences unknown, being with people you don’t understand, we seem to be so focused on safety and knowing everything that we’ve forgotten how to dive into the unknown and in that so much exhilaration and added curiosity is getting lost in life. And you can see it on peoples faces across society. You can see it in our kids. We need to reign back the safety bubble a little, and be sure they get to experience this world beyond our control.

As soon as you go somewhere you haven’t been, and you are there for more than the thing you think you know about "(ie, the Big Waterfall!) you look around and realize that no matter how many articles you’ve read, no matter how many photos you’ve scrolled through, no matter how much you’ve seen “influencers” show the place off, you actually know nothing about it, and it’s all open to new opportunity. New people. New smells. New foods. New landscapes.

Fuck, it’s a big world. And sure there are things that make it feel small from time to time, but for the most part when you get out in it, there are things so marvelously curious, the mystery of life only expands the further we get out into it.

And we don’t have to travel abroad to rekindle this fascination. We just have to get outside our safety net. Society and government is getting a little too good at babysitting and being babysat. It’s ok to walk off the trail. It’s ok to swim in the current. Humans thrive outside the safety bubble, and have an incredible ability to adapt and rise to all occasions. We actually get better the more challenges we take on. We are told by modern media that we just need to stay put to “stay safe.” Our weather apps even tell us this! Fuck that. (I’m sorry, that is three fucks in one piece of writing, more fucks than I strive for. I swear I’ll work on reducing that. It’s improper and a cheap language, and rather impolite, I know... But sometimes it’s just necessary.)

What I want for my kids, is something I want for society. I want people to put down their phones and get out more. I want people to rely on people more, technology less. We need a society that is connected to the natural world, even if it means our forests are a little more crowded, because it is in the natural world that we thrive and are reminded that there is a magic to this life that connects us to something deeper and more real. In the past people would call this a connection to god. Call it whatever you want, but the truth of the matter is we are not the center of the universe, and that is most easily realized when we step outside the illusory safety net of society and experience the world in all it’s might, and in all it’s terrific beauty. I don’t care what you call it, but for me, when I am out walking vulnerably in the forest during a thunderstorm, there is no more vivid reality than this. In those moments watching trees sway around me, lightening crash over my head, my chest cold from wet wind and tight with a slight apprehension about my own judgement, there is no question, this is not a simulation. This is a very real world. And it’s brilliant. And there is something far bigger than me at play here. And yet I’m connected to it.

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So the kids are back in school. I’ve got plenty of work to do. But I’m also working on two book projects. I’m pushing hard through a final edit on what I call The Four Cornered Forest, which is a modern adaptation of Hansel & Gretel that takes place up around Olney, Montana. I’d like to get this out in the world by/during winter. I need to find someone that can do an edit after me though… Anyone know of anyone?

And I’m working on a new story I hope to have first draft done by midwinter or sooner. I’m not going to talk about what that story is about quite yet. But it will be unlike anything I’ve written in the past and I’m really excited about it. While my first two novels were based on a tribute to my daughter, this one is for my son. Now if I can just hone in on which of the many first five pages I want to go with it’ll take off, but its getting close to launch, and with the time I have going into the school year, it’s going to be a fun project.